Organization Mission:
The SBDC offers at no cost, confidential consulting to help businesses in SE Minnesota identify, understand and overcome the challenges of starting a business, running a successful business, and developing exit strategies. We provide the professional expertise and guidance that every small business owner needs to flourish in today's competitive and ever-changing business world. We do not lend money to small businesses, however we work with the business owners and financial institutions to prepare documentation that lenders require for business loans.
The SE Minnesota SBDC is operated by the Rochester Community and Technical College with support from the Small Business Administration, the Department of Employment and Economic Development, multiple regional partners and local funding sources. The SBDC provides the following resources to southeastern Minnesota area businesses:

Community Beam (Cbeam) is a registry of private and public resources (organizations, projects/initiatives/programs) that can underpin economic and social developments of greater Rochester:

For the commercial sector, we tend to register startup activities (new companies and new commercial projects) that bring diversification and high-impact opportunities to the area.

For the non-profit sector, we wish to shine light on all the organizations and services that otherwise labor under relative obscurity.

Our hope is that Cbeam will encourage cross-sector collaborations and creative solutions.

While there are a number of registries in the community, Cbeam's distinct value is to pilot a database with a data structure and categorizations that answer the questions such as: What organizations or projects/programs in our community that have purported relevancies with some of the over-arching focuses put forward by initiatives such as DMC, J2G and Health Improvements.

This database could be used as one of the ways to explore the capacities of the community. If you are someone on an exploratory journey to learn about the greater Rochester community. Cbeam could be an interesting first step.

Definitions

The following defines the various project phases:

Available - a product, program or service is in production

Develop - program or application is being developed

Plan - idea is solid, stakeholders are identified, and there is strong commitment to go forward from all parties.

Concept Phase - idea scoped out with enough details to give an early sizing and/or to build a proof of concept demonstration